In Western society today there is no denying that, following the economic crash of 2008 and its continued after-effects, it takes a little longer to reach the heady heights of what is traditionally recognised as adulthood. Now milestones such as graduating from school or university, finding a paying job, buying a home, getting married and having children are, for various reasons, a little harder to achieve. With the rising cost of education in the UK and US, a scarcity of well-paid work, fiercer competition, increasing house prices and more liberal sexual attitudes, it is taking millennials longer to become adults.

For the generation of students that graduated during the economic recession, this is particularly true. In the US, where home ownership is traditionally encouraged early in adulthood, the last decade has seen a consistent rise in renting among young people. House sales reached a peak in the US a decade ago but the housing bubble burst and credit has since been hard to come by. This hit young would-be buyers the hardest and as a result they began renting instead.

The poor economic climate has also led to young people recategorising their priorities and, with that, the idea of what makes an adult has begun to shift somewhat. In 2012, the Clark University Poll of Emerging Adults looked into young people’s attitudes to adulthood. Only 4% of respondents said getting married was the most important factor for becoming an adult. Instead, 36% felt that it mattered most to accept responsibility for yourself and 30% cited becoming financially independent. When asked if they felt they had reached adulthood, 62% of 18-21-year-olds answered “in some ways yes, in some ways no”. On its own, this statistic is perhaps not the most surprising. However, among respondents aged 26-29, a significant 30% still felt this way.

The director of the poll, Jeffrey Arnett, wrote an article in 2000 for American Psychologist, proposing a new life stage between adolescence and young adulthood in industrialised countries. He called this stage “emerging adulthood” and described it as a “new conception of development for the period from the late teens through the twenties, with a focus on ages 18-25.” This new stage in life had come about in large part, Arnett suggested, because of the transition away from a manufacturing economy to one based mainly on information, technology and services.

Twelve years later, after conducting the Clark University poll, Arnett and his co-author Joseph Schwab insisted that emerging adulthood was here to stay, but that it would only delay – and not fundamentally alter – traditional adulthood. They identified cultural changes that they believed were unlikely to be reversed. These included the pursuit of more post-secondary education as a means of preparing for an increasingly competitive job market, marriage and children happening later in life, and widespread acceptance – or at least tolerance – of premarital sex and cohabitation. According to Arnett and Schwab, it thus makes sense to “see emerging adulthood as a new life stage rather than as a generational shift that will soon shift again.”

The identification of further education as a CV-building necessity rather than a life-enriching experience is felt most strongly in countries where university education is not free. In the UK, university tuition fees were introduced in the late 1990s and have risen ever since. This has left graduates facing unprecedented levels of debt, often exacerbated by students feeling they need to spend longer in education in order to meet the increased demands of the job market. With more and more people entering higher education, a university degree or a college diploma is no longer a guaranteed ticket into adulthood. The job market too, is no longer able to offer as much secure employment, as the explosion in zero-hour contracts suggests. Education and employment also no longer provide the key to home ownership. Figures from the Nationwide Building Society’s annual house price index show that house prices in Britain are over 100 times higher than they were in 1952. In real terms – after adjustment for inflation – house prices have tripled in the last 20 years. Across the industrialised world, in the wake of the Second World War, the baby boomer generation was able to access a plentiful stock of affordable houses. Today, particularly in global centres like London, affordable housing is in short supply. It's the magic of youth, that belief that there's a bright future ahead, despite all the evidence to the contrary in the present

The boomers are often criticised for creating a world in which financial profit trumped communal harmony, thereby pulling the rug from under their children’s feet. Margaret Thatcher famously said “There is no such thing as society,” and the property speculation, deregulation, welfare tightening and individualism the boomer generation indulged in were indeed true to her words. Alongside that, the movement of global capital means that in cities like London, there is competition for houses from people from all over the world. There is also the threat that, wherever you are, the job you might rely on or are interested in may be taken elsewhere.

This is the economic and social landscape the emerging adult exists in. It’s a landscape whose significance is played down by the optimistic Arnett. “I think the economic influence is limited,” he says. “It’s always hard to enter the labour market, whether times are good or bad overall. And yet, I’ve found [emerging adults] are always optimistic, even when the odds are against them. It’s the magic of youth, that belief that there’s a bright future ahead, despite all the evidence to the contrary in the present.” He prefers to see this period in life as one that is imbued with a “sense of possibilities” that comes from the exploration of identity and a focus on the self, as well as from a certain amount of instability.

Perhaps this reported optimism comes as a result of parents cushioning the blow in a way they might not have done in the past. Early Adulthood in a Family Context identifies increased parental involvement in the lives of young adult children. This, the book’s research says, is a change from 30 years ago. “Parents and offspring are highly involved in one another’s lives as evident by their phone conversations (more than once a week) and frequent parental financial, practical, and emotional support.”

In a hard economic climate, financial support from parents has almost become a necessity. This, of course, widens the economic gap between those who are born into money and those who are not. It also makes it harder for children to move fully into adulthood. Economic ties often come with emotional ones. If you still need to be supported by your parents, can you truly consider yourself a grown-up? “There have been concerns that emerging adults who stay at home longer with their parents may be less socially skilled than their peers," says Manfred Van Dulman, Editor-in-Chief of the Emerging Adulthood Journal, a publication that specialises in the drivers and consequences of this new life phase. "However that does not seem to be the case, and in countries like Italy it has not been unusual, particularly for young men, to stay at home until marriage.” The drawbacks of delayed adulthood seem few and far between, and any that do exist are greatly outweighed by the positives. It seems they're not wasting the extra time they now have, and are using it productively. “Despite there being a longer period for 'exploration', rates of alcohol and drug use have not increased in countries with a growing number of emerging adults," explains Van Dulman. This breathing room is being used to help them make more informed choices about their future. “If anything, it seems that emerging adults change jobs quicker than some of their older peers. Job stability is lower and to a degree this seems to be by choice.”

But is it all for the better? Professor W Keith Campbell, head of the University of Georgia’s psychology department, specialises in narcissism, culture and generational change. In response to a question about narcissism in young people, he says that, in the US at least, “There is a combination of joblessness and educational debt that has disproportionately harmed young people. They are in many ways responding rationally (in light of their upbringing) to a bad set of economic and political circumstances.”

Is emerging adulthood a stage of life that is here to stay, even if economic circumstances change? “My opinion is that we are entering an ‘adulthood optional’ society, but we won’t have the definitive answers for a decade or so,” says Campbell. Here there is the prospect of what Campbell refers to as an “avoidance of traditional adulthood”, which could lead to a further decrease in marriage and birth rates in industrialised countries. Difficult economic conditions may have been behind the development of emerging adulthood as an identifiable stage of life but an “adulthood optional” society could exist even under favourable conditions. It may be that the idea of the adult is now something only a child believes in. After all, having a house and children does not preclude you from behaving like a child and the traditional expectations of adulthood have been shown also to be great burdens.

The characteristics of today’s emerging adults may have been shaped in large part by the particular economic realities they have had to deal with but, whatever happens, those characteristics may well be here to stay.

Illustrations by May van Millingen